Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) are currently widespread and are recognized by consumers in, e.g., Apple™ and Microsoft™ products. GUIs typically include one or more items, such as icons or tiles, that can be selected by a user. Many GUIs show documents that are larger than the screen, for example, a web browser that shows a news page with a scroll bar on the side to let the user scroll up or down to access all of the content thereon. Another example is the home screen on an Apple iPhone™ that shows icons representing applications. When there are more than sixteen icons, the canvas of the home screen becomes larger than the device screen, and the user can scroll to access any of the icons.
The degree of interaction in GUIs becomes greater as GUIs become more advanced. For instance, in the Microsoft Word™ 2007 word processor, there is a concept where an interactive element becomes visible in direct response to a user action. Specifically, there is a feature that allows a user to select text, and when the user moves the cursor near the selected text a toolbar becomes visible and when the user moves the cursor away, the toolbar disappears.
The introduction of touch screens has changed the way some consumers see GUIs, and increasingly sophisticated applications and GUIs are being created for touchscreen devices. However, whether or not in the context of touchscreens, prior art techniques for navigating around a display space, e.g., scrolling, are not optimally elegant or engaging.